Clutter Diet – Week 1

I have recently joined the Clutter Diet community, in fact, this is my first week!

The major task assignment this week is to create a Destination Station near the entrance….a place where everyone can drop their phones, wallets, ipods, whatever. Rather than on the kitchen counter. Or the dining room table. Or the coffee table. I think women have it easier with purses….at least all my stuff is kept together in one spot, even if the purse sometimes gets in the way. But I live with two men and they’re always shedding their stuff all over the place.

We already have a hall closet that is set up with boxes to accumulate hats, gloves, scarves etc, particularly in the Canadian winters. In the summer, they tend to fill with sunglasses, ballcaps, and for some, toothbrushes as we don’t have ANY storage in our powder room (also off the front hall/entrance). Here is a picture of the closet, that I did NOT try to tidy before shooting. Note the spillage from the far left box (my dear husbands) into mine (second from left.) Note the lack of shoes in the closet. They are all in the hallway OUTSIDE the closet. Hmmm.

Anyway, this task is to create a space to leave small stuff, and I happen to have a five drawer chest by the front door. When our children were younger, we used it for all the little socks, mittens, hats, scarves, lunchbags etc when lived in a house with no closet at the front door. Now, one child has left home so we will assign one drawer for each of the three remaining residents, and then one drawer to store supplies for the powder room around the corner, and one drawer for library books that used to be stacked on a chest in the living room.

But first, we have to empty the junk out of the drawers. Here are some before pics:

It’s all stuff that doesn’t belong here!

Christmas cards, old frames, stuff that is waiting to be mended, two tubes of caulk and a caulking gun, ping pong rackets, duct tape, soap carving tools, aprons, ski-keys, etc . So the stuff was sorted, distributed to it’s rightful place in the house or tossed.

And then the magic happened!

The bottom drawer got library books, and the second from bottom the powder room supplies (see right).

The top three will accumulate their wares as people come home. The second drawer is mine and has my purse and a couple of books from my course, plus my notebook and pencil case. (see left). It all feels very neat and organized, and I’m happy with this first task!

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At my other blog: Berkman Family History

In this blog, I’ve talked about the origins of my Berkman family and a little bit about my most immediate ancestor, my father. I also looked at information about one of the family’s journey to the US. But there is a whole lot of uncertainty around most of the Berkman emigrants to North America. Some […]

The last two children born to my great-great grandfather, Hirsh Berkman, and his wife Sore, died as toddlers of croup. This was identified in death records from the Lithuanian town where they lived. Aharon Nate died at a-year-and-a-half in 1882, and daughter Teme Leye died at two-and-a-half years in 1886. This had me looking for some […]

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